A 29-year-old Florida woman faces multiple felony charges after she allegedly drove through a closed Secret Service checkpoint near Mar-a-Lago, led police on a pursuit, and forced officers to shoot her pit bull when it attacked them.
Alexa Rae Scharf of Loxahatchee drove her gray Hyundai SUV into the Bath & Tennis Club west parking lot checkpoint around 6:05 p.m. on a Tuesday evening in late August, according to a probable cause affidavit detailed by the Daily Mail. The checkpoint, set up near President Trump's Palm Beach estate, was closed. Scharf parked beside vehicle-screening tents, stepped out, and turned on a hose.
Secret Service Agent McGear approached and asked a simple question: "Who are you?" Scharf's answer, "I'm here for the car wash", set off a chain of events that shut down a stretch of South Ocean Boulevard for roughly three and a half hours and ended with an officer bitten, a dog dead, and Scharf in handcuffs facing a stack of felony charges.
When McGear tried to photograph the SUV's license plate, Scharf got back behind the wheel. She drove toward McGear, forcing the agent to pivot and jump out of her path. McGear later tracked the Hyundai to an oceanfront estate at 1236 Ocean Boulevard, less than half a mile from the checkpoint, where the property's entrance gate had been knocked down and visibly damaged. Scharf's SUV sat stalled in the driveway. She was strolling around the grounds.
Palm Beach police officers and Palm Beach County sheriff's deputies moved up the driveway and ordered Scharf to get out. She ignored them, climbed back into the running SUV, and drove directly toward Palm Beach Police Captain Watson, who had to move fast to avoid being struck.
Scharf then backed down the driveway. Officer Castineiras arrived and ordered her to stop. She kept coming, driving toward him and forcing him out of her path. She maneuvered between marked police cruisers and fled south on South Ocean Boulevard as officers gave chase with lights and sirens.
Three officers. Three times she allegedly aimed a vehicle at law enforcement. The probable cause affidavit found grounds for three counts of resisting an officer with violence.
The chase ended in a driveway on the 1500 block of South Ocean Boulevard, where officers conducted a felony stop. Scharf refused repeated commands to turn off the SUV and step out. Officers deployed stop sticks, broke the rear windshield and rear driver-side window, and pried open the driver's door to pull her from the vehicle.
That was not the end of it. Scharf's pit bull charged at officers, bit one of them, and kept coming. An officer fired twice. Palm Beach County Animal Care and Control personnel and a veterinarian responded and tried to treat the dog, but it died.
Palm Beach police said an initial on-scene investigation found no policy violations in the shooting. The officer who fired was not placed on administrative leave. The condition of the bitten officer has not been released.
Scharf was not a stranger to law enforcement. Court and driver's license records show her license had been suspended just eight days before the incident. Records also show Palm Beach Gardens police arrested her on a DUI charge in 2018.
She now faces two counts of aggravated assault with a vehicle, one count of felony fleeing, and one count of resisting an officer without violence. The affidavit also established probable cause for the three additional counts of resisting an officer with violence, though it remains unclear whether those have been formally filed. The New York Post reported Scharf was released on a $16,000 bond.
The Secret Service declined to comment on the incident.
South Ocean Boulevard between Via Agape and 1236 South Ocean Boulevard remained shut from roughly 6:00 p.m. to approximately 9:30 p.m., a three-and-a-half-hour closure that disrupted an entire stretch of Palm Beach because one woman decided a Secret Service checkpoint looked like a car wash.
No motive beyond that single bizarre claim has been offered. No explanation for the gate she knocked down, the officers she drove at, or the pursuit she forced. Just "I'm here for the car wash."
The men and women who staff those checkpoints put themselves between the public and a threat every shift. When someone drives a vehicle at them, once, twice, three times, the system worked the way it should: officers held their ground, gave commands, pursued lawfully, and brought the suspect into custody alive. That Scharf walked out on bond should concern every taxpayer who expects the justice system to take an attack on law enforcement as seriously as the officers on that boulevard did.
